The mixed up Maslow's pyramid of sexuality

Over-sexualization has killed intimacy.

Sometimes I have to keep my snobbery on a leash. Milan Kundera, one my favorite writers passed away a few days ago. And, I had to share this grief with countless chicks that have posted a picture with “The Unbearable Lightness of Being” on their lap at the beach. I struggle to respect women who feel guilty for needing attention and that succumb to the urge to prove that they are not just hot. Women will be really free when they will own their superficiality. 

Birth of Venus, Sandro Botticelli, 1485.

Yesterday, I finally managed to go grocery shopping. I was browsing the newspapers in the newsstand section at the supermarket when a cover article caught my eye. It was an article from ELLE France encouraging readers to embrace “eco-sexuality”. Two pages with pictures of naked women in a forest and an exhortation to “unite one's sexuality with nature as nature is feminist”.  As the granddaughter of a farmer, I did not grasp why these journalists took the time to encourage readers to do something that farmers have been doing since the dawn of time: having sex in the fields between working shifts. I am convinced that as long as we continue with this trend of intellectualizing everything, even the most instinctual of things, we will never enjoy sexuality. But it is interesting that a generation that according to data has far less sex than previous generations despite enjoying far more freedom is so damn obsessed with sex. Is it the obsession provoked by hunger, I wonder?

Apparently, there is also a manifesto for this new sexual identity: eco-sexuality is about having sex with nature, seeing mother earth not as a mother but as a lover. Some people got married to the dirt in “MarryTheSoil” ceremonies and even slip a condom over their finger before they stroke the flowers in order to stop interfering with pollination. While my first instinct reading this is to regret that we closed mental asylums, I think Kundera gave already a reply to the urge of my generation to intellectualize and to wish for “organic” experiences. 

“Flirting is a promise of sexual intercourse without a guarantee” wrote Kundera. In a society where times for flirting are considerably shorter, where flirting often happens after having sex rather than before and when it is all or nothing from the start, it is normal that people are feeling the need for something more “organic”. But God forbid they recognize that we’ve gone too far with some habits, they’d rather come up with idiocies like “eco-sexuality” instead of admitting it. In the USA, for example, some surveys found out that girls as young as 13 years old had already given a blowjob before giving their first kiss. If “eco-sexuality” is about loving nature, I wonder whether it wouldn’t be nicer to follow its example in the way we come up with our relationships rather than rubbing our genitals on trees and grass as this movement suggests we do. Nature has seasons, it prepares for each transition. It takes time to rest before blossoming. 

Before going as far as experimenting with some kinky stuff like “eco-sexuality” perhaps we should go back to the forgotten concept of intimacy. Intimacy is built on silences, on different rhythms and timings, and on the wait. In a pyramid of Maslow for sexuality, I’d put intimacy at the bottom, like the need for food and water. And sex would be at the pinnacle of it. I think our generation, is starving for intimacy and placing all bets on sex. Weirdly enough, what is at the bottom of the pyramid, intimacy and erotism, have become difficult to attain because we are encouraged to be omnivorous about people. There is always someone that could be a better fit out there. That is the illusion: thinking of people like products. And sex, which was the by-product of a long courtship and knowledge of each other has become very cheap because it is easily attainable. 

Milan Kundera on intimacy

I think intimacy precisely scares us because it risks hurting us. It is easier to handle being rejected after having sex with someone you do not love or know than being rejected by someone you open up to. Intimacy is potentially threatening and incomparably more rewarding too. But my generation has been sheltered so much that it prefers to get an STD or rub their ass with nettle to risk feeling something for somebody else.

Vilma Djala