A society shows its mastery in the management of sexuality not when it sets out unambiguous standards for sexual behavior or prescribed attitudes toward sexual feelings, but when it institutionalizes the emblematic display of sexual conquest. These institutions can be as varied as burning widows alive on the funeral pyres of their husbands or requiring the high visibility of a spouse at an elected official’s inauguration. Finite sexuality is a form of theater in which the distance between persons is regularly reduced to zero but in which neither touches the other.
