Sex, Soccer and Aella

A while ago I wrote an article about how perplexed I was by strong reactions to Aella, an online personality and sex worker who evokes disgust from many conservatives through her open discussions of sexuality and her sex life. Yet the topic is a wellspring I can never quite detach myself from. I cannot bridge the mental gulf between myself and people who get really agitated about Aella, and I also can’t help but think they don’t even realize that there is a point of view from which what they’re doing is odd. Part of it, I think, is just that I’m gay, but I genuinely do not understand the disgust in a bone-deep way that I find hard to convey, and I am concerned that perhaps they do not understand how odd they seem to many.

Alexandra Kollontai once compared the role of sex in a fully communist society to a glass of water, helpful and nourishing, but not worthy of special ethical obsession. This is, I think, not quite the right way to see sex in a more ideal society. My view is that sex is very important and emotionally charged but not all that different. It is the most central of the popular social activities, but that’s it. Think of a beloved and significant activity- but one just like the others. Suppose you really liked soccer. Soccer was a peak experience for you, your favorite hobby, the chief of the physical pleasures, and an important way of bonding with others. There were numerous people you really wanted to play soccer with- celebrities who seemed sporty, that nice man who lived next door, etc., etc. You spent a fair bit of time fantasizing about soccer. You formed close relationships through soccer, and you sometimes had important fallingouts with teammates. Maybe you even played odd soccer variants to spice things up. Ultimately though, while it was perhaps your favorite thing to do, it was just a thing to do.

Only, some other people seemed to have odd feelings about soccer, e.g.:

Some people argued that only someone who didn’t have a father in their life would just play soccer with anyone who wanted to:

Some dude said this:

Kind of begging the question. Who said you wanted to be a transgressive freak? It’s just soccer.

Some argued that it was necessary to redesign all of society, even if it meant greatly reducing freedom, in order to prevent certain groups from playing too much soccer:

Other people simply couldn’t contain their sheer revulsion at this free and loose soccer playing:

Certain people objected to soccer on the basis that it perverted our natural faculties. Legs were designed for walking, running towards prey and running from predators. Playing soccer with just anyone was a violation of natural law.

Others said that surely we must be disgusted at this free access to soccer, or else what does disgust apply to?

Others worried about how human dignity could possibly survive under the conditions of playing so much soccer with so many people:

Now, perhaps, you see my confusion. I feel the same way about sex as our hypothetical fanatical soccer player. I like it to be sure, I would be devastated to lose it and it forms an important part of my life narrative, but none of that inclines me to freak out about it in the way the above people are. The soccer analogy is far from perfect, I’ll concede, but the way I see sex is much closer to the way our hypothetical soccer lover sees soccer than to the way these people see sex.

Inevitably someone will say that the soccer example is a denial of our nature, we are programmed to care about sex far more than that! To this I’d say our nature is a matter of degree and negotiates its form with the society we are in, surprisingly few things are categorically in or out. Take monogamy. There doubtless are, within the human heart, wellsprings that push us towards sexual jealousy, but these don’t always win, and there other wellsprings pushing in the other direction. Our nature ensures that we will feel intensely about sex and that we will think about it a lot, but this is compatible with the soccer view. There have been societies in human history where neither men nor women are monogamous- the Mosuo and Zo'é people, for example. But even if you do not buy the clear empirical evidence that social alternatives to monogamy have existed, it is certainly not the case that you are powerless before your own essence to do anything but scream and shake at the evil of the woman on the computer screen who keeps having sex.

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Edit: I made this reply to the Defending Feminism account which is worth adding in, especially re: issues of sexual coercion:

“The analogy isn’t to a soccer game per se it’s to a soccer game played by someone obsessed with soccer. This clarifies part of our difference. What clarifies the other part is that, as I say in the piece, the analogy is not perfect, the e.g. certain emotional implications mean that sex can be predatory in ways you mention. But it is, more like a soccer game played by a soccer fanatic than anything these guys think it is.

Society should always reject the cases things you mention- sex between children and adult and pressuring people into sex, these stances are good. There are however, I think, at least some ways in which some progressives and some feminists have tried to make sex and sexual morality into something sacral in a way that I think is mistaken. These errors are subtle, especially compared to the errors of the conservatives, but they still are dangerous.”