Not normally the kind of thing that I'd pick up unprompted, but I recently heard the author being interviewed on a podcast and this sounded like a fresh take on a somewhat tired subject (and that title practically sells this book on its own).
Thank god I'm not dating today! is something I've said more than once these past few years. These feel like fraught times to be single, to say the least, and much of the discourse around this subject in America, I think it's important to add, has been crazy.
So let's see what a British author has to say about it all!
Maybe it's unsurprising that someone outside of the too-often overly politicized, toxic discourse here in the US actually makes sense on this issue, but Katherine Angel does.
To review, that aforementioned discourse in the US seems to have settled around the all-consuming importance of a single word — yes.
Yes, you can kiss me.
Yes, you can touch me there.
Yes, there too.
Yes, and there.
Yes, you can do that.
And yes, that too.
Or, at least, that's what we've been told. It's like 2-step verification, but for sex. And it's more like 50-step verification.
And yes, while consent is, of course, paramount before proceeding with any act of that particular congress, this constant verbal negotiating of terms feels, to me, overly robotic and to emphasize the transactional nature of the whole thing.
Can sex only exist inside a capitalist worldview?
Does this negotiation always have to be spoken out loud?
And does stating the terms out loud mean that both partners are now on equal footing? That all the complexities of human biology, all the baggage and trauma that we're each bringing to this encounter, have now been negated?
In addition, it seems to reinforce, in heterosexual relationships at least, an outdated, misleading stereotype — that because the emphasis is always put on the men to ask, it's the men who are doing the wanting and the women who are doing the submitting.
But can we really boil sex and desire down to a simple yes and no question (even if that "yes," we're told, needs to be repeated ad nauseam)?
No, Angel posits, things are a bit more nuanced than that. And by a bit, she means a lot.
And doesn't that only make sense?
We are, or at least most of us are, an incredibly indecisive species. I don't know what I want to eat for dinner (I always ask the waiter or waitress to choose for me), so sex?
Reader, do you really believe that the majority of people out there know themselves with complete certainty when it comes to what they want in sex? I certainly don't.
It just depends, doesn't it? On the mood, on the day, on the partner ... maybe boiling things down to a simple "yes" or "no" is simplifying things a bit too much. Maybe, rather than coming into things with the expectation that you just need to ask this question, men and women need to instead focus on getting better at understanding one another ... and themselves.
Maybe it's this getting to know one another in ways that go beyond "yes" that's part of the joy of the whole thing.