Flutterby™! : Mark Morford on Kinsey

Mark Morford does his usual silly rambling on Kinsey, the movie, and its effects on the culture. This got me largely because of this paragraph:

So then. Forget the alarmist headlines. Ignore the shrill faux-moral groups who live like sad trolls in places like Colorado Springs who deign to tell you what sex and God and love is supposed to be about despite how they haven't seen their own genitalia since about 1987. The Great Sexual Revolution 2.0 is coming. Deny it at your peril. Bring extra batteries.

I'm not sure it's 2.0, because, after all, the phrase "free love" entered English sometime back in the 1800s, but I have been thinking about where all that energy of the '90s went.

A long time ago, both in real years and in terms of personal development, I had a non-sexual experience that was life-changing, used some interesting and intense psychological techniques, and I remember thinking at the time "what if you could harness some of that role-playing and other intensity into sex?" Well, then along came the Internet, and I discovered that, indeed, people were, but I didn't always like the trappings and overtones that people brought to it. So while I read alt.sex.bondage and explored that culture, it wasn't until I discovered neo-Tantra that I thought I'd found a home.

But many of the "new age" aspects of that grated on the side of me that was increasingly seeking rationality, I had issues with the fact that "new age"ers seemed to be always trying to sell their latest MLM supplement products or overpriced home appliances, and...

...and eventually I developed some issues with trust and motives and basic psychological health with several people in some of the communities I was hanging out in. And except for Charlene, I never really met anyone I "clicked" with, really felt I could trust and connect with, in those circles.

I think I've seen the same basic movmement in the general culture. The SHS mailing list and numerous others that were once vibrant are now dormant. Interesting discussions on the relationships of sex and power and such have been replaced with Bay Area exhibitionists volunteering their modeling services on Tribe.net's photography forums. "Swinging" has gained a new prominence, but it seems that in those circles quantity of partners has replaced the search for exploring the headspace.

And it's not like I'm looking for more partners, and maybe that's the realization that most of us who were so excited during that time eventually came to. That sex is really a head game ("the nice thing about a mind fuck is you can't catch anything"), and healthy head games are built on relationships based on a hell of a lot of trust, and lots of trust is hard to come by. But I've still got my eyes open for that ultimate community.