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If the types of sex most common in LGBTQI+ communities were regarded as “functional” sex, we might see different categories of disorder, such as: Gag reflex dysfunction Anal penetration disorder Repetitive strain injury.
Many women struggle to identify what turns them on because their pleasure is so de-centred in the (hetero)sexual script. This is linked to wider pressures on women to be “for-others” rather than “for-themselves”.
There’s a cultural sense of the normal sexual orientation people should have, the norm of sexual attractiveness they should aspire to, normal erotic desires they should experience, and normal sexual relationships they should have. We’ve seen here that we’re also taught to aspire to a “normal” type and frequency of sex.
Psychologist Sandra Byers found that people who’d been in a relationship for over a decade still only understood about 60% of what their partner liked sexually and only around 20% of what they didn’t.
With sexualities which are marginalized and pathologized, there’s often a tendency for people to fight for their rights in ways that are problematic. For example: 1. Flipping the narrative to suggest the marginalized group is actually superior to others. 2. Arguing that the group is normal in every other way – so should be granted access to normativity – often in comparison to other “less normal” groups.
The imperative to have sex that is both great and normal leads to even more self-monitoring as people tread the tightrope between being “spicy” enough to be desired and retain long-term relationships, while never falling into abnormal or disordered sex.
benign diversity: regarding all forms of sexuality as equally valid and acceptable, regardless of how common, extreme, or culturally acceptable they are.
The rules of Western monogamy are pretty unclear and shift over time. People frequently only realize they follow different rules from one another once these have been broken, for example around flirting, kissing, solo sex, online porn or cybersex, close friendships, or friendships with ex-partners.
Just as the sexual imperative pressures people to be sexual in a certain way, so mononormativity pressures people to experience particular emotional experiences in relationships and to make certain commitments.
The related idea of decolonial love locates current mononormativity in the histories of colonialism, slavery, and capitalism, which involved treating other people as things for personal gain. As author and activist Philippe Leonard Fradet notes, decolonial love involves ongoing critical reflection on power dynamics and consent. It commits to never treating another person – or yourself – as property which somebody is entitled to, or from whom certain forms of labour are expected. A related concept from disability activism is access intimacy.
Suspicion around sex work obscures the fact that most types of workers have to engage in emotional labour – feigning enjoyment to clients and managers.
As we saw in the last chapter, focusing on transgression rather than coercion causes problems. Instead of working to police all forms of transgressive sex (including sex work), we could work to prevent all forms of coercive work: human trafficking, forced labour, and exploitation (including sexual exploitation). However, this may well involve facing difficult questions about reparations for historical slavery, the way we all benefit from cheap labour, and the exploitation and harassment involved in everyday workplaces.
Philosopher Talia Mae Bettcher argues that this basic denial of authenticity denies marginalized people first-person authority over their own sexualities and genders.
