Question for Dr. Marty Klein about the (Non) Meaning of Sex

Dr. Klein, I liked your article on-line about the (non)meaning of sex. I am posting here to ask if you could clarifiy or further explain some things in that article, which I regard as an important and wise article in many ways. I am referring to the article that appears at

http://www.ejhs.org/volume1/mklein.htm

What concerns me to make me ask your for further explanation are two matters: (1) the meaning of the word "meaning" and (2) the meaning of "dark side."

I need to explain my concerns. Whenever I ask what a word means, I'm asking what it refers to. The word "apple" refers to a category of fruit. The word "happiness" refers in general to an overall satisfaction with life that human beings strive for, and more specifically the word "happiness" refers to many other issues related to achieving this satisfaction. Moreover, when anything, even something that is not a word, is said to "mean" something, it is my understanding (and you may correct me, please) that we are talking about something referring to something other than itself.

To say, as you say, that human sexuality means nothing seems to me to say that human sexuality does not of necessity refer to anything beyond itself. Sexuality only refers to something else that someone may want it to refer to on any sort of particular occasion.

You wrote, for example: "People who believe they know the objective meaning of sex can easily say what sex is and what it isn't. Their dichotomy is clear, the sexual side predictably narrow. That's one reason such people can be so self-righteous about what humans should and should not do sexually."

As an example of the things people may ascribe to sex
as its supposedly necessary referent, you stated, too, that "...[intimacy], for example, is a common rallying point for people who need sex to have Meaning. 'Intimacy' (which, of course, means radically different things to different people) is fine. But setting it up as a standard for 'healthy' sexuality creates a hierarchy of sexual experiences, downplaying or even excluding many of its most important aspects."

I understand this explanation of yours to mean that some folks believe that sex necessarily refers to intimacy and that some of these same folks then may even use their arbitrarily chosen referent (intimacy) as a standard to judge how persons should be sexual--i.e., they judge only sex with intimacy as healthy, a judgment which then implies that everyone should of course seek only that which is ostensibly healthy. Who wants to not be healthy?

What I found so wise and useful in your argument, moreover, is your conclusion that because of the intrinsic meaninglessness of sex, the real source of sexual repression is not any singular sex-negative ideology or set of such ideologies such as those advocated by sex-negative religious institutions. Instead, you conclude: "Rigidity about sexual experience, meaning, and decision-making is the true culprit [charged with being the motive for sexual repression]. With encouraging consistency you further charged that even the attempt by Humanism to discover some "true" secular meaning of sexuality colludes in this repressive rigidity.

I found all of this reasoning wonderfully insightful and heartening...until, that is, I read the following:

"Sexuality, for example, has a dark side. One can deal with this in many ways, but an experience-based model of sexuality does not judge this fact. Instead it accepts it, makes room for it, plays with it or not, but always respects it."

Then I looked again at the first sentence of your essay stating that sex has no intrinsic meaning. My problem is that I don't understand how sex can have a dark side if it has no intrinsic meaning. If I understand you when you refer to the ostensible dark side of sex, you seem to be saying that sex intrisically does have something about it that refers to something else that is dark. That would mean that sex does have at least this "dark side" intrinsic meaning.

Perpahs my perplexity is due to a defective assumption on my part about how you intend the word "meaning" to be understood. If I have understood your use of the word "meaning," you have been saying there is nothing about human sexuality itself that refers to anything beyond itself other than that which we otherwise happpen to want to have sex refer to. What we want to have sex refer may be done rigidly, and in that case we become repressed or repressive. Or we may want to have sex refer to something or to nothing else and hold this want non-rigidly and thereby be more fortunate and wise.

I can more or less disregard my own reservation that sexuality does have at least have one intrinsic referent (the human reproductive system) if I assume your essay is only addressing sexuality that is not used for reproductive purposes. So, disregarding the obvious (but irrelevant-to- this-discussion) referent of the generative system in sexuality, I was in complete agreement with you and heartenend by your reasoning about sex having no necessary referents.

But when I read that you believe, after all, that there is something that sex does refer to--the ostensible dark side--I thought I must have missed somthing. Isn't the "dark side" also just another meaning someone may want to have sex refer to?

It would seem to be that just as one can want to have sex refer to intimacy, one can also have sex refer to something dark. The alleged dark side of sex is no more an intrinsic part of sex than is intimacy or any other meaning one may ascribe to sex. Or am I wrong here? You are the sexologist, not me. Is it your position that there is with this supposed sexual "dark side" an exception to the principle that sex has no intrinsic meaning?

Moreover, I'm not really sure what a "dark side" means, but I suppose it refers to referents some persons have for their sexual feelings or expressions that would be regarded as unfortunate or misguided when viewed in either some very broad or very narrow moral perspective. If so, it would seem to me that there is nothing special about human sexuality as distinct from any other human motive or impulse that makes it intrinsically suited to express a human dark side. For example, throughout human history it is apparent that every kind of human goodness as well as every kind of atrocity has been performed by persons moved by passionate love. Accordingly, it can be that love, too, has a dark side. As so it is with any other human motive one can imagine. Is is not so that human beings, rather than sexuality, that can be said to have a dark side, and does not every human being have a dark side at least sometimes in relation to some motive or another?

Your reactions and ideas would be much appreciated.

Replies:

What is the dark side of sex?, by Chaddy, 11/16/99 Re: What is the dark side of sex?, by , 12/19/99 Helpful...Thanks, by Jim Duffy, 12/23/99 Re:Question for Dr. Marty Klein about the (Non) Meaning of Sex, by qwerty, 08/16/01 the (Non) Meaning of Sex, by Marty Klein, Ph.D., 08/20/01

| Behavior OnLine Home Page | Disclaimer |

Copyright © 1996-2004 Behavior OnLine, Inc. All rights reserved.