"Is Sex Passé?" - by Erica Jong

Is Sex Passé?
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By ERICA JONG
NY Times - July 9, 2011

WHAT could be more eternal than sexuality? The fog of longing, the obsession with the loved one’s voice, smell, touch. Sex is discombobulating and distracting, it makes you immune to money, politics and family. And sometimes I think the younger generation wants to give it up.

People always ask me what happened to sex since “Fear of Flying.” While editing an anthology of women’s sexual writing called “Sugar in My Bowl” last year, I was fascinated to see, among younger women, a nostalgia for ’50s-era attitudes toward sexuality. The older writers in my anthology are raunchier than the younger writers. The younger writers are obsessed with motherhood and monogamy.

It makes sense. Daughters always want to be different from their mothers. If their mothers discovered free sex, then they want to rediscover monogamy. My daughter, Molly Jong-Fast, who is in her mid-30s, wrote an essay called “They Had Sex So I Didn’t Have To.” Her friend Julie Klam wrote “Let’s Not Talk About Sex.” The novelist Elisa Albert said: “Sex is overexposed. It needs to take a vacation, turn off its phone, get off the grid.” Meg Wolitzer, author of “The Uncoupling,” a fictional retelling of “Lysistrata,” described “a kind of background chatter about women losing interest in sex.” Min Jin Lee, a contributor to the anthology, suggested that “for cosmopolitan singles, sex with intimacy appears to be neither the norm nor the objective.”

Generalizing about cultural trends is tricky, but everywhere there are signs that sex has lost its frisson of freedom. Is sex less piquant when it is not forbidden? Sex itself may not be dead, but it seems sexual passion is on life support.

The Internet obliges by offering simulated sex without intimacy, without identity and without fear of infection. Risky behavior can be devoid of risk — unless of course you use your real name and are an elected official.

Not only did we fail to corrupt our daughters, but we gave them a sterile way to have sex, electronically. Clearly the lure of Internet sex is the lack of involvement. We want to keep the chaos of sex trapped in a device we think we can control.

Just as the watchword of my generation was freedom, that of my daughter’s generation seems to be control. Is this just the predictable swing of the pendulum or a new passion for order in an ever more chaotic world? A little of both. We idealized open marriage; our daughters are back to idealizing monogamy. We were unable to extinguish the lust for propriety.

Punishing the sexual woman is a hoary, antique meme found from “Jane Eyre” to “The Scarlet Letter” to “Sex and the City,” where the lustiest woman ended up with breast cancer. Sex for women is dangerous. Sex for women leads to madness in attics, cancer and death by fire. Better to soul cycle and write cookbooks. Better to give up men and sleep with one’s children. Better to wear one’s baby in a man-distancing sling and breast-feed at all hours so your mate knows your breasts don’t belong to him. Our current orgy of multiple maternity does indeed leave little room for sexuality. With children in your bed, is there any space for sexual passion? The question lingers in the air, unanswered.

Does this mean there are no sexual taboos left? Not really. Sex between older people is the new unmentionable, the thing that makes our kids yell, “Ewww — gross!” You won’t find many movies or TV shows about 70-year-olds falling in love, though they may be doing it in real life.

The backlash against sex has lasted longer than the sexual revolution itself. Both birth control and abortion are under attack in many states. Women’s health care is considered expendable in budgetary negotiations. And the right wing only wants to champion unborn children. (Those already born are presumed able to fend for themselves.)

Lust for control fuels our current obsession with the deficit, our rejection of passion, our undoing of women’s rights. How far will we go in destroying women’s equality before a new generation of feminists wakes up? This time we hope those feminists will be of both genders and that men will understand how much equality benefits them.

Different though we are, men and women were designed to be allies, to fill out each other’s limitations, to raise children together and give them different models of adulthood. We have often botched attempts to do this, but there is valor in trying to get it right, to heal the world and the rift between the sexes, to pursue the healing of home and by extension the healing of the earth.

Physical pleasure binds two people together and lets them endure the inevitable pains and losses of being human. When sex becomes boring, something deeper is usually the problem — resentment or envy or lack of honesty. So I worry about the sudden craze for Lysistrata’s solution. Why reject honey for vinegar? Don’t we all deserve sugar in our bowls?
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Erica Jong is the author of 22 books, most recently “Sugar in My Bowl.”

SELABI !! - by Hénock Gugsa

Selabi ! * ስላቢ !  ------
By Hénock Gugsa ( ሄኖክ  ጉግሣ )
Previously, when the spirit has moved me, I have dared to write about some particularly unique aspects of life in Ethiopia.  You may call them one man's stubborn forays into cultural, day-to-day phenomena that are taken for granted in Ethiopia.  But they could and should certainly fascinate and intrigue Ethiopians and non-Ethiopians in equal measure.  Some of you may have already read or sampled my writing on the topics of "meganya" ( meganya  መጋኛ) or "the yogurt fly" ( the yogurt fly  የ፡ እርጐ፡ ዝንብ).  In the same vein, I would like to address here another interesting Ethiopian reality known as: Selabi. [Pronounced … sel-ah-bee  ሰላቢ]

Well, what is selabi?  I am not really certain of the exact meaning of the word … I must defer that to linguists.  But it is my educated guess that it derives from a root word: meseleb, which could mean … to put one over, to blind, to cheat, etc.  It is a word highly charged with negative connotations.

A selabi is a person that practices trickery, black magic, and disappearing acts of self or of objects nearby.  No good can come of any association with a selabi.  It is bad luck, and bad karma to have a selabi around you.  After an encounter with a selabi, you could be dispossessed of your mojo, and life can suddenly become a series of missteps and disillusionment.  In extreme cases, even your health and well-being could be affected … and that is something to be considered seriously.

Selabi is a close kin to meganya, but in a phantom-like (poltergeist) way.  A selabi’s mischief is sly and subtle, and by the time it is detected, it is probably too late for countermeasures.  Ethiopian parents protect their children by making them wear some talismans and spell-potions around their necks.  It is believed that these items are effective defenses against selabi, meganya, and the pervasive evil-eye!

When the word “selabi” is uttered in any public setting, it is like an alarm bell, a clarion call to stop whatever you're doing and observe your surroundings closely.  Saying “selabi” is like shouting “fire!”  The significance and urgency of the situation is left up to the people on hand at the time.

To me, “selabi” conjures up images of some sociopathic individual who for obvious or non-obvious reasons sets out to make other people’s lives a misery.  A selabi could be one person acting alone, or it could be a group of people working in evil unison to bring about the demise of an individual or another group of people.  Even governments can be selabi!

The pseudo-socialist (in reality fascist) government of Mengistu Haile Mariam is a prime example of a selabi institution that did more harm than good in Ethiopia over two decades ago.  In a period lasting almost 16 years, Mengistu and his "dergue" (ደርግ) committed atrocious acts on a nation that already had enough on its hands dealing with natural calamities, such as droughts and famine.  And in the end, true to form, and like the selabi that he was, Mengistu slipped out of the country and fled to Zimbabwe.  To date, he has been living there in luxury after having plundered whatever he could from poor Ethiopia.  Not surprisingly, it is no irony that Mengistu has been the honored guest of another selabi who goes by the name of Robert Mugabe.

In conclusion, I say to the reader: be alert, be wary, there may be a selabi near you. Don’t put your trust or faith in strangers.  Be doubtful and skeptical of governments and especially of politicians.  The media should also come under your close scrutiny especially those that are commercial and yet claim to be free.  Question and examine closely everything and everyone!  Good faith is only good as an ideal.  In reality, trust (እምነት) is just another tool that a selabi could turn and use against you!  My apologies for a sour-note exit!
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* “Selabi” ~ © Hénock Gugsa (ሄኖክ ጉግሣ) - 12/26/2011