83blog

[83blog]

Touching on the Idea of Bad Sex Aesthetics.

A condensed version of an essay I wrote surrounding the idea of vulnerability within art for uni. WC: 2,130

‘I’m not obsessed with sex, just can’t stop thinking about it’, is the first line of a monologue from ‘Fleabag’, which has always sat beside me, it continues as ‘The performance of it, the awkwardness of it, the drama of it. The moment you realise someone wants your body’ ('Fleabag', 2016). The rush one may feel when realising they are desired, simply for their looks, can be immensely ego boosting. Although these advances from a man toward a woman could either be empowering and that of a great compliment, or on the other hand it could be intimidating, frightening.

Candace Vogler’s ideas regarding Leo Bersani’s ‘Is The Rectum A Grave?’ essay, argues that ‘The seesaw of me-not-me in sex… treats sexual excitement, not as a culturally imbricated destination for men with overly ridged sense of masculine self-hood seeking de-personalising intimacy, but rather as the sublime footprint of human evolution. In doing so, it risks underrepresenting the degree to which the possibility of taking pleasure from being relieved of ‘personhood’ is deeply contingent and political, and naturalising the designation of sex as the place in which this happens … One’s access to the desire for this experience of self-dissolution may be a symptom of privilege – a hetro-sexual white man for instance, might crave that experience more intensely for all the ways that he experiences his ‘personhood’ as a burden’ (Merck, Townsend, 2002, p 104).

One-night stands are a perfect way for people to wave goodbye to their ‘personhood.’ You can be whoever you want to be, its dark when you bring them home, no way of seeing all of your books and posters, no way of analysing you – even better if you don’t bring them back to your own home. You can put up a front, let go of insecurities and pretend for a whole evening that you are better than you know yourself to be. However, this is not the case for everyone, some people may need a level of security, guarantors, clauses if you will, in order to be able to sleep with someone and feel comfortable giving up their ‘personhood’. In a society where things like kink and fetishes are fairly normalised - to the point where rough sex can almost be considered borderline ‘vanilla’; some need to know their boundaries will not be crossed if they give into this state of relief. In the name of protection, some peoples break of personhood comes with a cost, they have to question how alleviating themselves will result, classic risk verses reward. In these situations people can either leave their ‘personhood’ entirely, or be stripped of it, particularly woman. Which brings me into Bad Sex Aesthetics.

Doyle along with other women at a think tank convention, were having conversations around what makes sex ‘good’ or ‘bad’ and asking if we can tailor our experiences with it? ‘This model offers women … a choice between only two kinds of sex - good /happy/ fulfilling sex or assaultive sex. It seemed to us that we could use more room to acknowledge the importance of experiences of boring or non- orgasmic sex, humiliation, even painful and traumatic sex (but entirely consensual) encounters as potentially formative - as foundational, at the very least as experiences of what we do not want. We wanted to claim this kind of sex as something that happens without enacting, around ourselves, a therapeutic discourse of victimisation, confession, and recovery.’ (Merck, Townsend, 2002, p 102). Whether this is to be taken as not wanting to be coddled with sympathy every time something is bad, is individualistic. Though if so, why? Feasibly shame pairs with being vulnerable about ‘bad’ sex. Is there a fatigue that accompanies being sympathised with? Either way, being able to take these experiences as lessons is only useful if you can understand and process why exactly it is that you did not like it. Alternatively, why you did like it. Must one really encounter unscrupulous actions to appreciate the good ones, especially if the latter leaves you traumatised? There is a big debate amongst creatives as to whether sadness, trauma, and other issues alike, actually develop and push your creative work. Whether it gives you more scope to work with and offers you more emotion to tap into. This is a slanted argument as everyone deals with grief, depression, and such, differently. Personally, art is something I often use to work through and process these emotions. By encapsulating them and trapping them, allowing the intellectualisation of them - in an essence, into a page. Though, this is counterproductive as it bottles them up. Feeling these emotions first and referring to them later is much healthier. So yes, technically these negative incidents can be good for art and other such creative mediums, if executed properly with care for mental health and/or stability.

Doyle continues, ‘States such as self-abandonment, submission, objectification - the experience of being made the object of another’s pleasure - were not only exciting and fun but very important, even necessary to experience’ (Merck, Townsend, 2002, p 103). Is this because of one’s past trauma or is this due to centuries of manipulation? Or should we assume this is the natural condition of women? If we did not have this looming feeling and a history of having to be subservient to men, would as many of us really enjoy the previously listed states? Being submissive in such an act may allow us to let go of all the unwritten responsibilities we carry – or feel we carry. This, if the case, would make deep sense in a housewife setting, but that contradicts itself as commonly in those cases the 'man of the house' would carry the stress of making sure he was earning enough money and then also feel he had a burden of responsibility. There are many avenues you can explore with this notion.

Bersani describes sex as 'Structurally pivoting on a will to self-disintegration' (Merck, Townsend, 2002, p 103). I have seen it said, by women themselves, that some women choose their sexual partners (typically if they are not committed to them romantically,) as a form of self-harm. In the sense that these men are not preferable suitors, as they may be callous, liars, addicts, or whatever it may be that does not line up with the woman’s morals. Bersani’s description backs this up here, there is a fine line with love and hate the same way there seems to be a fine line with consent and coercion. Doyle then quotes a fellow member of this think tank, ‘Bad sex grows out of the failures of the mechanism that allows us to take pleasure in letting the body become a thing, a body 'subjected to another’s desires - the play with one’s own 'thingness' being one condition of possibility for the ecstasy of being relieved, for a moment, of ones 'personhood’’(Merck, Townsend, 2002, p 104). This excerpt again proves the enjoyment we ‘supposedly’ share in being exposed enough with another person, so much so that we would let them do whatever they want to us; within reason one would assume. That reason being what we ourselves our comfortable with, right? Though, if we want to ‘relieve’ ourselves of our ‘personhood’, we would also have to relieve ourselves of our freewill, as after all that is what makes us, at our core, people. I would say that this part is (arguably) without much emotional turmoil, potentially enjoyable. It seems that the comedown afterwards, the loss of adrenaline and other hormones that brings along this shame and regret we have seen discussed, is where the issue lies, where we recognise and name our experiences.

Doyle continues my thoughts, ‘Vogler and Sharon Willis described the unhappy experience of yourself as a subject in sex as a 'failure in objectification'. This failure comes when, in sex, you see yourself (phone rings, door opens, mirror, etc). Or, worse, you discover you've misread the moment, misread your desires - or theirs and don’t trust that you can go there and come back intact... Perhaps you misrecognised the context and find yourself giving your body over in a way you don’t enjoy and to a person you don’t trust...out of desire to please, out of a fear appearing prudish, you did ask for it’ (Merck, Townsend, 2002, p 105). I comprehensively agreed with this, particularly the last sentence as it highlights the delicate wire between consent and coercion. I think all women will have experienced this or something similar at one point in their lives. Especially 'giving yourself over'. The desire, the drive to make someone else happy, pleasing them purely at your own expense. Not always sexually either. I have seen countless art about sexual assault and sexual shame, some more on the nose than others. Typically, these all have thousands upon thousands of likes and comments – from women, in solidarity. Doyle then commented that, ‘Maybe bad sex is sex you deeply regret’ (Merck, Townsend, 2002, p 105).

Doyle also said Tracey Emin faces the ‘paradox of being both artist and object at once’ (Merck, Townsend, 2002, p 114). Women in art must deal with being seen as a woman, a body, a figure, an object, before being recognised for their talent as an artist. Even in the term 'Women Artist' which was to help notice women in art. It was a combat to terms like the ‘Old Masters,’ which references old western world artists such as, Caravaggio, Rembrandt, Da Vinci, and Vermeer. Yet never includes artists like, Artemisia Gentileschi, Giovanna Garzoni, Mary Beale and Lavinia Fontana, all brilliant painters in their fields. Woman Artist puts Women before Artist, further increasing them being seen for their bodies before their art. Obviously though, due to English grammatic there is not much that could be altered about this, so it is a futile case.

Back in 1996, Tracey Emin locked herself, naked, in an enclosed room for three weeks, creating: Exorcism Of The Last Painting I Ever Made. This position induced her to rebuild the fears and nervousness around painting, something she had abandoned for six years. At the start of the nineties, Emin endured two harrowing abortions and the thought of painting distressed the artist. Fish-eye lenses were on the exterior walls of the studio she inhabited; audiences could catch peeks of her in her processes. The paintings and drawings that she made throughout her time there, were recreations (and appropriations) of pieces by Yves Klein, Edvard Munch, and Pablo Picasso. Women’s access to the artist’s studio have periodically been as muses and or models, not as artists. Recreating these pieces meant she was not only able to better her skills but also position herself vicariously through these majorly successful and world recognised men's eyes.

Emin said, ‘I hated my body; I was scared of the dark; I was scared of being asleep. I was suffering from guilt and punishing myself, so I threw myself in a box and gave myself three and a half weeks to sort it out. And I did’ (Faurschou, 2023). This is not only physical art, but performance art too. She put herself out there in the public eye in the most vulnerable way possible, quite literally as she was constantly observed; like a rat on a table being dissected. She knew the backlash she may face and still she did it in the name of art. Emin has dealt with the difficulty of being both a woman and an artist throughout her career, as Doyle put it, the paradox. I can only begin to imagine the thoughts she had racing around her head as she sat naked, but not alluringly; in that room, painting, at the mercy of peoples wandering eyes. Even if she had done this privately with no witnesses, I would argue that it is still a performance. She is performing in the sense that she is forcing herself to do something she does not want to do, in this case painting. She would be performing right up until the moment she realises she is not anymore, when the urge to paint has come naturally.

Being able to reclaim and change the perspective of our experiences we can make the best of a bad situation. Whilst this may not work for all it is a nice idea, I suppose maybe bad sex is sex you want to enjoy? Or it is sex you simply did not enjoy? Perhaps sex is something we can use as a tool to discover our inner workings the same as we would a diagnosis questionnaire. So, are bad sex aesthetics valid? How ever you view sex, whether you take pleasure in disregarding your personhood or not, I’m sure we can all agree that the ‘failure in objectification’ does suck.

by bex.

Bibliography: ‘Fleabag’ (2016) Series 1, Episode 2, BBC 3 Faurschou (2023) Exorcism of the Last Painting I ever Made. Available at: https://www.faurschou.com/exhibition/exorcism-of-the-last-painting-i-ever-made Merck, M and Townsend, C (2002) The Art of Tracey Emin. Thames and Hudson