The coincidence of Ash Wednesday and Valentine’s Day seems the right moment to air my dark, wintry perspective on human commingling. I think the new sensitivity to sexual misconduct is partly a good thing. We have begun to admit that there is dark difficulty in sex, that it’s not innocent adult fun. It pains young feminists to admit it, but they sort of are. They want to pin all the blame on male aggressors, but only most of it lies there. In both genders, sex accentuates pride, ego, insecurity, and little moments of cruelty can mutate to monstrous proportions.
I got round to reading ‘Cat Person’, the New Yorker short story by Kristen Roupenian that has prompted much reflection on sexual mores. A young woman goes on a date with an older man; she decides she’s not attracted to him, and finds his opening sexual moves inept, but submits to sex for a tangle of motives – boredom, vanity, the awkwardness of extricating herself.
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