2024-08-28 13:38:24
While an entire generation seeks to combine pleasure with fair consideration for others, should we stop directing our sexuality toward the orgasmic grail, and prefer free and enlightened enjoyment? Post-romantic analysis.
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Experience it. You meet someone. You are on a terrace, your two glasses lined up. Suddenly, but with a minimum of tact, state that you are in an open relationship; say, for example: “I believe that love, desire, pleasure can be linked or unlinked.”. So, opposite, see the face of the other impatient with an indescribable lot of questions, practical and philosophical (” but how do you do it? » or « but you tell each other everything? “), as if suddenly the doors of intimacy had to open so that the light that enters justifies this absolutely immoral, strange and wacky situation. Because yes, sexuality is not neutral. And the discourse about sexuality, which is as old as the world, has often been a search for control. This is what Foucault explains in his History of sexuality – the Greeks distinguished between just and unjust practices and accorded their sexual life to this division. Wrongly? Not entirely. Sexuality is a component of our life, which must align with a certain number of principles, values that we believe in. Especially since the discourse on sexuality has become, with #MeToo, a challenge of reshaping society on healthier and more serene bases between women and men. Also, we question ourselves more than previous generations about what is good for us and what is not.
Romantic innocence no longer exists. We know the failures of the couple, the wear and tear, the deception, the marriages that break up, the children who have to choose. We know the predatory capacity of men. And about all this, we raise our heads, we think that another possibility exists – not subject to the beasts-men, to the dictates of the eternal and unbreathable couple, etc. And in all this, there is the birth of a new form of romance, a post-romance, of Marxist love, knowing the historical and social process of its birth. An informed romance, or rather: questioned. Umberto Eco wrote: “He loves her in a time of lost innocence.” We love in a time of lost innocence – rather: we seek to love in a time of lost innocence. But to love, to fuck, to obtain the grail – the orgasm – must we not let go, be relaxed, breathe, open up? How can we be both very informed and sufficiently liberated in order to meet, love and take pleasure? How can we enjoy intelligently and better?
DEAD FROM A ONE NIGHT STAND?
There is this thing of saying that a man in his twenties who is a little too intellectual “fucks badly”. Certainly. According to the IFOP report of January 2024 on the state and frequency of sexuality in France today, 18-25 year olds make love less. Could it then be a whole generation of overqualified people who “fuck badly”? For Quitterie Chadefaux, author of the podcast “La chose étrange”, no – on the contrary: “There is less ‘kissing for the sake of fucking’ and more pursuit of pleasure.” A generation of hedonists, in short? Not completely. The debate is polarizing, as noted by Cathline Smoos, sexologist and psychologist: “My clientele is increasingly divided between young people aged 20 to 35 who want to free their sexuality, and individuals of the same age, their heads stuffed with the clichés peddled by masculinist coaches.”
“MANY SUFFER FROM THE CULTURE OF CONSUMING THE OTHER.” – CATHLINE SMOOS
But, as disparate as they may be, these two groups of people express, either through anxiety, fear, anguish, or through self-affirmation, the return to so-called traditional values and a certain dose of contempt for women, the ambition to find the other. To love, and to love better. The worldwide success of Taylor Swift, of New Romance literature, or of erotic podcasts and audiobooks… could all this be the symptom of a generation lacking romance? “It’s something I see a lot in the LGBT population, notes Cathline Smoos.Many suffer from the culture of consuming others. Sexuality is not neutral. To really be in a “one-night stand” type approach, both people must be very comfortable in their own skin and in their lives. Otherwise, it is suffering. Commercialization or masturbation in the other does not contribute to self-esteem, because you feel it when the other, even for a one-night stand, is engaged in the relationship or has a consumer relationship, ghosting. In truth, it is not the question of the one-night stand, but of the way in which sexuality is perceived. I also see it in people who try to have a polyamorous relationship. It is something that requires preparation, it is not easy to open up to the other, to be in that intimacy.
NEW ROMANTIC STORIES
Is the said decrease in sexuality among young people being in favor of healthier, more serene, empathetic, less violent, less thoughtless, more consensual sexual relations? “We are in a phase of change, says Quitterie Chadefaux . Consent, we talk about it, but it’s not yet completely clear to everyone. The day we have integrated good practices of consent, whether it’s about a one-night stand or a lifetime of sex, we will probably be able to put this new narrative in place. Sexuality among young people today is partly oriented, and must be oriented, towards a new narrative of the other, but also of the couple, driven by a so-called “feminine” vision of love – which is a masculine way of saying it – that is to say less focused on performance, better oriented towards the search for pleasure, osmosis, equity in sexuality, whether it be for one night or for a lifetime. “We pitted the girls against each other, comments Quitterie Chadefaux, who need romance, to guys who only want to fuck – that’s a huge stereotype. Guys are not robots any more than girls are. So I feel in younger people a need for connection – which may only be physical, but that’s not the point.” It is therefore possible to think, in the manner of the Greeks, of an ethics of sexuality: at the limit between the pleasures of all. To go beyond it, or to think only of oneself, will be unjust, while the search for a balance between the pleasures of one and the other will be just.
“ORGASM IS THE ICING ON THE CAKE, BUT IT DOESN’T MAKE FOR A BETTER FUCK.” – QUITTERIE CHADEFAUX
To do this, certain clichés must be buried, in particular that of orgasm, which is harmful both to young people discovering their sexuality and to couples. “We talk a lot about deconstructing this notion of orgasm, to refocus on the notion of pleasure, notes Quitterie Chadefaux.The ultimate guide has to be pleasure – orgasm is the cherry on top, but it doesn’t make for a better fuck. For a guy, ejaculating doesn’t mean having an orgasm, for example. Sex can be much more intense without an orgasm, too.”The orgasm sanctified as an absolute necessity of a correct sexual act goes hand in hand with an Instagrammable society, made up of people who cannot dissociate a personality of virtual perfection and a phenomenal personality, of imperfection of self and reality.“I tell my patients,supports Cathline Smoos, “it’s okay.” Not that sexuality isn’t important, but that if you haven’t had an orgasm lately, it’s okay. You have to give yourself some peace. Not everything is perfect, yes, and that’s fine.
This is, in short, what post-romance is: seeing the mutation of our categories of gender, sexuality, and relationships with others, grasping the moment of uncertainty that such a questioning of the past implies, and understanding that it is only in movement that our ethics are defined, and not in the fixed, the immutable, the past. Post-romance is a philosophy of love turned toward the future, like the youngest among us – let us hope.
By Alexis Lacourte
Photo Jeanne Peppercorn
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