Sex and the USA

I'd speculated in a previous entrythat it was the show Sex and the City that was responsible for removing the stigma of owning sex toys on the part of women. This articlejust reaffirms what I'd suspected.

(So Target is selling sex toys now? Hmmm...)

How weird is the sexual climate in this country right now? On the one hand you have super online and offline retailers - such as Amazon.com and Target, respectively - now openly providing sex toys. On the other hand, you have President Bush and the Department of Justice breathing fire down the neck of the adult industry (taking actions against legal, consensual porn, mind you). Furthermore, over here you have so many mainstream celebrities like Eva Longoriaconfessing candidly to using sex toys; even as the bosses at her television network (ABC) are telling her to ixnay on the talk about vibrators-ay (granted, her station is a very family-friendly outfit). So what happens after Miss Longoria's public confession? Boxes and boxes of vibrators get shipped to her home by admiring fans. Meanwhile, back at the ranch (figuratively and perhaps literally speaking in some cases), it's still illegal to sell sex toys in the states of Texas, Alabama, and Georgia (I'm not sure who the governor of Texas was when the edict initially came down in that state, but I have a pretty good guess...)

Moreover, Jenna Jameson seems to make every mainstream female celebrity toplist from FHM magazine to IMDB.com. Conversely, it's possible that sometime in the near future you might have to pay an extra sin taxin order to get her best-selling book or any of her videos online.

As far as sexuality is concerned in this country, all of these things remind me of the opening remarks from A Tale of Two Cities : "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times." And it doesn't matter what side of the fence you happen to fall on for this statement to be true. Whether you're pro-pornography and all about frank discussions of bedroom behavior; or you hope that porn goes the way of the dodo bird, and your policy is "Don't ask, don't tell" towards experimentation with adult devices.

Just as an aside: In a way, the Bush administration has made the adult industry a sympathetic figure in all of this, if that's possible. Ever since I first weighed in on the decision of the Attorney General's office to make the take-down of the industry Job #1, it seems that all the notable quotes (such as that of political pundit Arianna Huffington) I see on the issue are about lambasting that decision. I often wonder what kind of progress sex researchers Alfred Kinsey, William Masters, and Virginia Johnson would have made in this country under this present administration. My thoughts? Not much. No wonder all of the good sexuality studies right now are coming out of Great Britain.