Stirring Sexual Coffee (from the coffee poem)

[AVENguy]

Stirring Sexual Coffee: A Look at the Thermodynamics of Innocence

A simple understanding of physics tells us that all systems tend towards entropy. Once you’ve stirred cream into your coffee there is no way to stir it back out again, systems tend from a state of “order” to one of “disorder,” and getting them back again is almost impossible. I can’t help thinking of entropy when a friend asks me, as often they do, whether I have experimented with sexuality. I feel as if I am being tested for innocence; under current sexual thinking the only way that someone can be uninterested in sex is if their coffee hasn’t been stirred, as it were.

The idea that sexuality entails irreversible chaos is the core of modern sexual discourse. Once relationships cross the line from being “just friends” to sexual intimacy there is no going back, sexuality brings with it an onslaught of emotional turbulence that will shake the simplicity out of any relationship it encounters. Even when nothing-but-friends engage in sexual activity this turbulence is braced for; relationships that were once undefined are now laboriously outlined. On a national scale, the Christian Right gather support against what it terms “the Gay Agenda” by showing crowds of half-naked, writhing bodies in which the chaos of sexual pleasure has, presumably, burst out of the marital bedroom and into the streets. To the writhing Queer bodes that the Christian Right has so eagerly documented the logic is much the same: writhing half-naked in the street is politically powerful precisely BECAUSE it creates an irreversible state of sexual chaos, because it disrupts the order of day-to-day homophobic culture. If sex is entropy, then sex drive is nothing more than the second law of thermodynamics; all people are driven toward sex, because sex is chaos.

Under this line of thinking asexuality is intrinsically ordered, contained and “frigid.” When I am asked if I have experimented with asexuality and I answer “Yes, but it was dull” I am demonstrating my own rigidity. If I think sex is dull, it must be because I am incapable of letting myself be swept up in the chaos of sexual pleasure. At best this inability to experience sexual pleasure is written into my DNA, and marks me for a well ordered, emotionally simple life. At worst it represents sexual repression wrapped in the guise of the gay rights movement, a stubborn pathological unwillingness to “let myself go.”

To me the idea seems preposterous. An arbitrary set of acts, vaguely centered around some sort of penetration, constitute the natural disordered state of humanity? There is, somewhere, a desire to engage in them so basic that once it has (inevitably) mixed itself into my system I will be unable to entangle it? In my day-to-day life, I have learned to act sexual in order to get by in social situations. There are times when I’ve actively flirted with people, kissed them or made out with them. The feeling was not one of being released, but one of climbing into a complicated, awkward machine that I did not know how to (and had no real desire to) operate. My sexual friends tell me that this is normal. I think it is indicative.

How can sexuality simultaneously be the degenerate state of humanity and so highly constructed? If most sexual people have to learn to like sex (not “discover their innate sexuality”) then how could not liking it be unnatural, confining and (f)rigid? The answer seems simple enough: sex is constructed, and the pleasure that results from sex is learned, but performing sexual activity lets people access something that they would otherwise be unable to. Sex drastically, almost invariably, changes relationships, and sexual relationships behave in and are thought of in ways that nonsexual relationships do only rarely. Rarely do nonsexual friends constantly and actively affirm their commitment to one another, rarely do they plan on raising children together. Sex isn’t entropy, sexual relationships are. In our society, friendships are confined. There are things that, emotionally speaking, they can’t do unless they become sexual. The sense of chaos and inevitability that surrounds sexuality isn’t about sex but about sexual relationships. Sexual activity is merely a way to gain access to that state of higher entropy, one which is arbitrary, constructed. Ordered.

Let’s get back to coffee, and me being asked if I’ve tried sexual activity. As an asexual, my friend thinks, I must be innocent. Once I’ve experimented with sexual activity (and gotten the construct to work) there will, presumably, be no going back. The opposite it true. Asexuality is not, as my friend imagines, about staying within the confines of friendship. For me it is about breaking down the highly constructed system of activities by which relationships other than friendship are accessed. Asexuality is about falling in love over a conversation. Living as an asexual not about refusing to open a door, it’s about carving out new ones. I look across the table at my friend and wonder whether they would be able to go back if they experimented with asexuality.

[Bee]

Wow!!! Poetry to my ears!

Asexuality is about falling in love over a conversation. Living as an asexual not about refusing to open a door, it’s about carving out new ones.

I completely agree :)

Its all about reconstructing sexuality and redefining.

[Artemis]

I second that :D

[Brother Wilbur]

Yes!! Same quote as above, please.

I didn't know or think that sexual people had to learn to like to be sexual, though. At my high school, its just about all the kids can talk about. Usually it leads to games of "never have I ever" or something and sometimes I join in because I find it humorous to be the only one left with all ten fingers up. Finally i am usually so disgusted to find that not all teenage girls are innocent people like me, which, I admit, I am, I say something like I am going to practice celebacy. Someone says, "All of your life?" and I answer in the affirmative, and she says "thats a long time!" My point is, it seems to be seen as a very important part of life.

About falling in love over conversations: For the longest time I didn't think anyone seriously had crushes based on looks alone, though I finally realized I was wrong. I thought that just because I never did. I never really had a very strong crush- most of mine were more like, "i like this person, I want to be around them and be their friend." I cannot fathom at all liking someone for their looks. I've never really found anyone attractive or unattractive- beyond a lack of blemishes, straight teeth and other fairly obvious large things, I really can't tell what is considered handsome or not. If I know someone, and think that they have a beautiful personality, that person is automatically beautiful to me. Most of it shines through the eyes- aren't eyes beautiful? I don't think there is anything such as ordinary eyes. Just really look someone in the eye when they are talking to you- I mean really examine them. Everyone has beautiful eyes.

Just one thing: parts of your AWESOME essay thingy sounded as if asexuality was a choice that we each made. That would be just celebacy. But asexuality isn't really a choice, is it for you people? it wasn't for me. It just was. And I do think that sexuality is natural. So is asexuality, but sexuality is more so. I mean, to survive as a species, we must reproduce. This doesn't mean there is anything wrong with asexuality, but it is different. But I don't think it is anymore wrong than, oooh say, ADD. Which I also am. There are all sorts of "minorities" if you will, and that can easily be seen as wrong, unnatural, and different or something, but... oh dear what a stupid stupid paragraph this was. I just expressed two contradicting opinions. I confuse myself. If you can make sense of this, that is awesome. Congradulations.

laura

[bard of aven]

I wonder if we can unhack the site????

My college physics professor summarized the laws of thermodynamics by saying: One, you can't win. Two, you can't break even. Three, you have to play.

I am also reminded of one of my favorite bad jokes, the one about extra virgin olive oil being made from olives that never had sex....twice.

But I am really here tonight to talk about skiing. I knew about skiing when I was growing up. I had seen pictures of it, seen it occasionally on tv, even liked to watch it, knew lots of people liked to do it as often as they could, would go out of their way to do it, spend lots of money on doing it, and even some of them spend money on being safe while they were doing it.

But I never wanted to do it. And I never did it. Until I was what, maybe 38? When I was living in Europe, I got invited to a friend's in Poland for Christmas and did not know until the evening before we left that he and a friend had booked a 3-day new years ski holiday package for us in the Carpathians. So I figured I had to go, they could ski, I could enjoy the scenery and whatnot. But no. There was nothing for it. They had arranged equipment and all, and were determined that they were going to preside over me losing my skirginigy. And I did. In public. In the most clumsy and dangerous fashion possible. After falling off the tow 3 times, I made it half way down a bunny slope falling seven more times. And refused to try again. We spent the rest of the time drunk, as they would no go without me.

It was a complete bust. I never wanted to do it. I did not enjoy it. My difference from these people in this way eventually caused us to drift apart. It was a disaster in conception, execution, and aftermath. Instructors and books and schools and even a positive first experience would not have helped. I never wanted to ski. I did not want to when I did it. I never since wanted to ski again. But I did ski. I lost my skirginity. And no matter what I do, I cannot get it back.

And it don't make a fuck's worth of difference. Unless we let it. And we do. It's just another silly status thing. Once you've had an experience you cannot go back.

The problem you face and I don't is that the people who regard skiing as the center of their lives and relationship patterns are not keeping me from privileges and statuses that accrue to them as skiers, and that I think I should have without skiing.

Innocence or its opposite (experience? guilt?) are unrelated to sexual experience except in the popular mind. I was a monk once. Not all monks are virgins. But I have probably known more male virgins than most people. And none of them were innocent. Sex is not what takes away innocence, whatever that may be. It is merely living that does it. To associate innocence with lack of sex is as much of a construct as anything else about sex. Attributing desirability to innocence, saying it is better than its opposite, is likewise a construct.

If you are incapable or undesirous of being swept up in the sexual chaos, you don't get a free ride from entropy; you do not get to remain innocent. There are plenty of other ways, and singularly more powerful and less dull ways, to exercise you natural rights under the second law of thermodynamics. There is no cream in my coffee, either. But it is redolent of cinnamon, cardamom, and cloves most days. And strong and unpalatable to the cream and sugar crowd, poor little things. And it is a lot more interesting and better tasting to me than Borden's best. Our lives are likely to be a whole lot less ordered, in the usual way, than the lives of our (you should pardon the expression) fucking friends. It is not a lack of chaos in us that scares them and makes them uncomfortable. It is how different our chaos is from theirs, and how unrecognizable it is to them, and how much more self-determined our chaos can be.

boa

[Brother Wilbur]

Well-said.

Re: innocence.

Definitely didn't mean that way. All packed in that wee yet actually its not that wee a word. Alllllll sorts of subjects come up in those games, that and drugs and all sorts of subjects... in my wee (I like that word) teenage world, thats considered innocent. Naive is probably a better word. Another reason, I still think the best of people even though I've definitely seen super-rotten sides of people. Too hard to explain. Blah. AMEN BOA I agree with what ya said. Ah.

Just saw Les Mis, people... oh man. I am sooo obsessed with that darned musical opera play thing. What IS it? It is usually called a musical, but it is entirely sung, so doesn't that make it an opera? Anyone know, and care to tell? Production. That covers EVERYTHING.

Laura

[AVENguy]

Very well said, BOA. I like your continuation of the coffee metaphore.

If you are incapable or undesirous of being swept up in the sexual chaos, you don't get a free ride from entropy; you do not get to remain innocent.

I would go even further. We're definitely not avoiding entropy by avoiding sex, are we just substituting a different TYPE of entropy or is there something more complicated going on?

Of the many, many metaphores we currently have floating around, I think I like the one of the car the best. Cars are constructs, carefully ordered mechanical devices. In order to drive one, you have to follow a carefully ordered set of rules. DRIVING a car, however, is liberating. It lets you go places that it would take forever to just walk to, it opens up new possibilities and (to get thermodynamic about it) induces a higher state of entropy.

So who has a wider range of possibilities before them, the person with a working car off the assembly line or ther person who, rather than driving cars, tries to use an alternative mode of transportation. Maybe they stick to preexisting modes (they just bike everywhere), and in doing so they get to appreciate in depth alot of things that people miss at 60 mph. Maybe they spend their time taking apart cars, trying to figure out how they work and trying to design some new gizmo to dart around in.

[bard of aven]

One thing I do not like about any of the analogies is that they all seem to imply that sexuals experience chaos and asexuals don't, or that sexuals experience some special sort of chaos that asexuals don't. In the context of the thousand entropies that mortal flesh is heir to, I am not sure that being sexual is even a significant contributor to one's overall loss of innocence, whatever that is. I strongly suspect that, for example, the death of a close family memebr or leaving the nest to stand or fall on one's own or entering the military and going through basic training are far greater contributors to loss of innocence than getting laid.

And even the construct of sexual innocence is fraught with inconsistencies and imponderables (or at least unaswerables). It depends on what your definition of 'virginity' is. In some cultures, females receive anal sex before marriage and are considered virgins when they marry. Many American teen females seem to think that giving oral sex to males is not "sex". Are they virgins if that is all they have done? If teen boys who have traded handjobs or participated in circle jerks finally have penetrative sex with a female, when exactly did they cease to be virgins? Is an asexual who masturbates but has never interacted with another person sexually innocent? I had a friend when I ws in the monestary who told me he "had done everything you can do with a women except fuck" who considered himself a virgin. So what is the definition of 'virgin' and 'innocnece' and who decides?

One thing I don't like about arguing from analogy is that analogies are useful tools in acquiring understanding (it's just like that except for this), but they have their own entopy that increases as the argument becomes more detailed. The farther you stretch them, the less they apply.

boa

[AVENguy]

One thing I do not like about any of the analogies is that they all seem to imply that sexuals experience chaos and asexuals don't, or that sexuals experience some special sort of chaos that asexuals don't.

Sorry, let me clarify. And see if I can drop a couple of metaphores (the thermodynamic among them.)

"Sexual Innocence" is a statement about social priviledge, NOT sexual activity. To be "sexually innocent" is to never have experienced a relationship priviledged as sexual. (At least in my book.)

In the sense that they have access to a system of socially and individually priviledged relationships that we don't, sexual people CAN experience things that we can't (at least not easily.)

Back to the car metaphore- can we drive around just like sexual people? Sure, but the (social) engines driving us have to be ones that we design ourselves, we can't just take the same 'ol internal combustion engine off the shelf. (We can have relationships modeled on sexual relationships, dating marraige etc, but we still have to do some fundamental redefinition in order to form them.)

There are FEWER possibilities open to us, in that it's harder for us to access (and then to have socially recognized) the sort of relationships that involve a certain range of possibilities (long-term commitement, family, kids, etc.)

There are MORE possibilities open to us in that we necessarily think about the relationships we HAVE in ways that haven't been explored yet. Sexual people could, pheasibly, do this too, but they're not as forced to. Because we don't use normative ideas of sexuality to define our relationships we're more open to think about how we WILL define them.

[bard of aven]

...There are FEWER possibilities open to us, in that it's harder for us to access (and then to have socially recognized) the sort of relationships that involve a certain range of possibilities (long-term commitement, family, kids, etc.)

There are MORE possibilities open to us in that we necessarily think about the relationships we HAVE in ways that haven't been explored yet.....

Yes.

I am beginning to think that the real differences in our ways of thinking about these things is not our differing theoretical frames of reference or different experiences, but something that underlies these -- the different things we want out of life. You I think desire some sort of ltr and family life, traditionally defined or not, and children, and tend to think about asexuality in theoretical structures that help you empower yourself to find what you want, to possibly assist in the jolting of social structures to be more open to allowing you to live in a way that will make you happy and fulfilled. Please correct me if I am wrong.

I tend to want and expect a lot less out of life. I find happiness and fulfillment in other ways, and tend to use theoretical structures that cater to my desires.

I make no judgments here one way or the other. I do not believe in absolute frames of reference, and am inclined to belief that most FsOR are equally valid.

boa

[bard of aven]

"Sexual Innocence" is a statement about social priviledge, NOT sexual activity. To be "sexually innocent" is to never have experienced a relationship priviledged as sexual. (At least in my book.)

Which brings up an interesting dissonance: Those who have lost this supposed innocence and thus have the socially privileged relationship sometimes seem to look on the supposedly still innocent with a sort of wistful envy, as if there is something to be desidred in our not having privileged relationships, and something to regret in them having such privilege.

boa

[Cate Perfect]

Which brings up an interesting dissonance: Those who have lost this supposed innocence and thus have the socially privileged relationship sometimes seem to look on the supposedly still innocent with a sort of wistful envy, as if there is something to be desidred in our not having privileged relationships, and something to regret in them having such privilege.

boa

That is something that drives me crazy. When a sexual person says, 'I wish I had waited' or 'sex isn't that important' but very soon after that they say or imply 'it's time you lost it, don't you think?' So...you wish you hadn't but you want me to as soon as possible? Um...that doesn't make sense. It's rather like the concept of 'Sex is dirty...save it for someone you love.'

Cate

[bard of aven]

Misery loves company?

boa

[Cate Perfect]

LOL! That's a good theory.

Just one of those sexual contradictions. Like 'Marriage is great! Everyone should get married! 'Cept you queers, of course.'

Cate

[Brother Wilbur]

Misery does love company! And we all like to hear ourselves talk. Don't know where that came from. Ah, well.

Someone said something... somewhere... or maybe they didn't... something about life for us being not as much, but i disagree. I expect a whole lot out of life and I have a sense of disappointment because I doubt it will all come out, and I don't know if I will be able to just have a plain old boring life if it doesn't work out, but I don't think it will not happen be

aah whatever i'm talking in circles I'm going to bed i think.

laura

[Red Angel]

I am also reminded of one of my favorite bad jokes, the one about extra virgin olive oil being made from olives that never had sex....twice.

You see, here's how it's done. First they take olives that never had sex. That's one. Then they make oil from those olives. That oil never has sex. That's two. That's why it's extra-virgin olive oil.

[Brother Wilbur]

The only decent kind of olive oil around, obviously.

Can a person be extra-virgin? Hmm.. Probably not. Wouldn't that imply the the virgin's mother was also a virgin in order to be extra-virgin? Well, I suppose that is technically possible if they artificially supplied the erm..... whoa, the word I'm thinking of rhymes with erm!!!! Wow, thats strange.

Shucks. I'd like to be extra-virgin. But I'm pretty sure my mother had me the normal way.

Note: Normal does not necessarily mean best.

Brother Wilbur

[The Archangel]

I've liked all I've heard. If I can add my two cents in, I was talked into sex, and I think there is something that changes in you that doesn't happen with all the things building up to it. I can't really described it, but it does make you feel like a different person. The funny thing to me is that before, when I told people I wasn't interested in sex they said, "Well, that's because you haven't tried it yet." Now people tell me that, " You just had a bad experience," or "When you're with somone you love, it will be different." How long does the saga continue? You could go through hundreds of people and still ask yourself, "Do I like this yet?" Which sounds like a good way to end up with a terrible disease. Plus if it really were about "being with someone you love," what would it mean after giving it up to so many people.

[The Archangel]

I just realized that this forum is way old and after I've rambled on and spilled my soul, probably no one will ever read this. So if they do, let me know so I don't feel dumb. Thanks

[Cassiel]

That sounds like a very unpleasant experience, and I'm sorry it happened to you. It's like the world can't be satisfied. You don't do something, and they think that you're ignorant or abnormal. You do that thing and don't enjoy it, and they think it's a figment of your imagination. And if you had gone and done what was "expected", then it wouldn't really have mattered much to them in the long run, because "everybody does it". And meanwhile you would have been miserable, doing something you didn't really want to do. In times like these, we have to forgo pleasing everyone's mindless expectations and instead do what is right for ourselves.

[!]

Living as an asexual not about refusing to open a door' date=' it’s about carving out new ones.quote']

:) great quote

[violeteyedsoul]

That sounds like a very unpleasant experience, and I'm sorry it happened to you. It's like the world can't be satisfied. You don't do something, and they think that you're ignorant or abnormal. You do that thing and don't enjoy it, and they think it's a figment of your imagination. And if you had gone and done what was "expected", then it wouldn't really have mattered much to them in the long run, because "everybody does it". And meanwhile you would have been miserable, doing something you didn't really want to do. In times like these, we have to forgo pleasing everyone's mindless expectations and instead do what is right for ourselves.

Hit the nail on the head, and what I've been through!

HERE! HERE!