Ditz

Issue date: 3/18/08 Section: Viewpoints

I'm not forty, but I am a virgin.

I've never really thought it was a big deal, except people always seem so genuinely surprised when it comes up. "Really? No way! How do you do it?" I guess I should be flattered; I'd be more concerned if the reaction was, "Oh, yeah. I can see that."

But why would I do that to myself?

Let's start with Gandhi.

"An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind," the bespectacled, barefoot activist once said. He wasn't the first to express the concept, but his simple moral elegance made it a popular proverb and, for shrewd small-time capitalists, a top-selling bumper sticker. But while his mantra is usually invoked in world policy debates, it also holds tremendously powerful truth in everyday, interpersonal situations.

It's a shame that we rarely apply it to either one.

In reality, as we pontificate about how politicians should run the world, we tend to subscribe to a very different doctrine in our personal lives. We are fundamentally selfish creatures who are primarily focused on our individual attainment, enjoyment, and pleasure. And that's before we even enter pre-school.

If you need convincing, here's a simple experiment: go through your normal day and count the number of times you hear or say the word "get." Get paid. Get rich. Get in shape. Get hammered. Get some. The context and meaning varies, but the underlying implication is the same. Life has become all about the things, attributes, and experiences that will give us pleasure and, theoretically, make us happy. Then we wonder why they don't. It's the classic hedonist's paradox: the more you grasp at pleasure, the more elusive it becomes.

The makers of Prozac think this philosophy is fantastic. It sustains demand.

As we become more materialistic, our culture becomes more and more expendable. Each new trend or fad has only a brief, limited shelf-life before it's tossed aside like a used husk to make way for the next wave. Our face-to-face interactions are shallower and shorter. I meet far more people in one day than most medieval peasants met in a lifetime, but I hardly know any of them. Instead, I've been taught to emphasize "networking skills," so that I can make connections with well-placed individuals who will help me get something I want.

We have become disposable people. Or, more precisely, everyone else has become disposable to us.

It isn't surprising that this thinking has influenced our view of sex and relationships. Increasingly, we're focused on how much sex we can get, regardless of circumstances or the effect it may have.

Men are stereotypically more likely to view the opposite sex as gratification objects, but more women seem to have adopted the same casual attitude. Why? I think it's an issue of leveling the score. In Ditz's December article "Indulge Your Desires and Ruin Your Chances," Britt Karp, Natsuko Kiyoshi, and Lauren Redford said, "If we're going to let a man have sex as he pleases, without coming away from it branded a whore, then damn it, we better let women, too!" Actually, I agree. The double standard is ridiculous. Many males have used women, with tacit popular approval, for years. But the question is, should women retaliate?

The benefits are immediate. You'll experience temporary pleasure and validation, you'll burn calories, and you'll be part of a hip, avant-garde crowd for whom waiting for meaningful, romantic sex in a committed relationship is a charming Victorian-era relic at best and a tool of perpetual male oppression at worst.

Side effects, however, may include increased jadedness, decreased empathy, and a gnawing, nagging lack of satisfaction. You won't be the first to become a sexual libertine, and like many before you, you might find that casual sex is great at spontaneity but lousy at fulfilling expectations. The Sexual Revolution is over forty years old, and it's interesting to read the thoughts of people who were there from the beginning. In his 1983 essay "A Revolution's Broken Promises," prominent psychologist Peter Marin was already expressing his disillusionment with what the movement had wrought. "We have been liberated from the taboos of the past only to find ourselves imprisoned in a 'freedom' that brings us no closer to our real nature and needs," he said. "Sex has become almost entirely socialized, invaded by manufactured images and experts…whose main interest is not sex but making money or names for themselves."

Twenty-five years later, our culture and economy has an even greater vested interest in instant gratification, and there is no more perfect embodiment of the concept than casual sex. "Sex sells" is, after all, the most famous, tested, and true statement in advertising. Do you really think condom manufacturers care about your emotional well-being? Are Maxim or Playboy concerned that they're pushing an idealized, objectified, hyper-sexualized image of women? Do Vogue, Marie Claire, or Seventeen magazine agonize over the unrealistic expectations they create? I doubt it. Omnipresent, shallow, consequence-free sex vowed to liberate us, but it has also become our new societal and economic master.

Marriage is not fail-safe, but if I ever participate in one, I'd prefer to do so with as little baggage and as much altruism as possible. It's risky because love might never happen, But if it does, I suspect it will be more rewarding. A 2004 ABC News poll on American sexuality agreed, finding that "people who are married or in a committed relationship…are more likely to be satisfied with their sex lives than those who are not in such a relationship." Make of that what you will.

Real love seems to take time. Even Quentin Crisp, who was neither an advocate nor a practitioner of Judeo-Christian sexual standards, famously quipped that, "for flavor, instant sex will never supersede the stuff you have to peel and cook." Personally, I want the full flavor instead of empty McDonald's-style copulation. Even if a Big-Mac occasionally looks great.

But that's me. And I'm selfish in many other ways. And you have to decide how to live for yourself. After all, this isn't really about sex; it's about a mutual respect for each other's essential humanity. I don't demand that you make the same choices I do, and I definitely won't ask you to sign a cheesy abstinence pledge. I never did. I do ask, however, that you take the time to think about how you're being influenced, pressured, and sensationalized by your culture. Think about how you're being viewed as a physical commodity, and how everyone else might be becoming a commodity to you.

Western individualism isn't necessarily the enemy. In fact, one of the dead-on truths of the individualist ethos is the notion that, in the end, the only person you can control is yourself. Everyone seems to be making decisions without thinking about how they might affect everyone else, but in that moment when you're most tempted, you don't have to follow suit. Our culture may be increasingly built on using other people, but no one is forcing you to be a lemming.

Despite my own shortcomings, I find it paradoxical that while college campuses are the nuclei of anti-war activism, the same people who criticize retaliatory warfare often seem to practice it in their sex lives. That same ABC News poll found that college students were twice as likely as older adults to have had "revenge sex…just to get back at someone else."

Cheating to get even, taking without giving, and using because you were once used all perpetuates a vicious worldwide cycle. "Mutually-Assured Destruction" isn't just a nuclear-age foreign strategy; it's also a lifestyle. As we unthinkingly degrade others' humanity, we also degrade our own.

I've chosen not to play the hooking-up game for two reasons: one, because I think it's a better way to live until I find someone to really love; two, because for all our individuality, our lives are more interconnected than we realize. And if we're going to demand respect, understanding, and altruism from our leaders, maybe we should try them in our personal lives first.

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